Dukes Academy Analysis
Dukes Academy Analysis
Introduction
It is known that supplemental instruction is effective in reducing drop, failure, and withdrawal rates in traditionally challenging courses such as biology and chemistry. However, there is a disparity in student access to traditional on-campus supplemental instruction programs such as tutoring centers and TA-facilitated review sessions. To date, there are limited data describing the effects of student-made online supplemental instruction (OSI) on grades, and fewer still addressing how online options for supplemental instruction mitigate accessibility rifts that exists between students. With this shortage of data comes an exceptional opportunity to gain foundational knowledge about how student-made OSI materials impact grades, learning outcomes, and student’s accessibility to resources for success. High-quality student-created supplemental instruction resources have the potential to change the way science courses are experienced at JMU and other universities. Our project also offers an exciting opportunity for undergraduates to work collaboratively and creatively with other undergraduates and faculty to produce resources that contribute to the learning community of JMU.
Project Description
Roughly a year ago, our group of three tutors/TAs noticed that there were some students that desired to come to our organic chemistry tutoring sessions and the tutoring center but were restricted by various situations. Students either did not have schedules conducive to attending or were unable to travel to campus to receive extra help. Since it is known that supplemental instruction is correlated with higher pass rates in challenging courses, we felt that these students were at a disadvantage when compared to their peers who could regularly attend. We decided to create resources that could be accessed online, by everyone, in order to increase the accessibility to supplemental instruction resources at JMU.
We were originally inspired by YouTube channels that had been useful to us in our own challenging courses in the past. Channels such as Kahn Academy, Armando Hasudigan, AK Lecutres, The Organic Chemistry Tutor, ect. featured content creators offering unique ways of explaining difficult concepts with the added luxury of being able to pause, rewind, slow down, or speed up at one’s discretion. We wanted to create a channel like Kahn Academy which featured tutorial videos made by students who had been successful with a certain professor in the past. The students using the content would then learn first-hand how to be successful with Professor “X” with pro tips from a peer that had already aced X’s class.
We knew from our combined experience as tutors and TAs that chemistry students love practice problems. The most frequent request from students on feedback surveys was always: “please bring more practice problems.” So, we decided that instead of re-lecturing or going over class notes in our videos, we would explain solutions to practice problems that we created with the foundational concepts (and the professor’s unique curriculum) in mind.
We wanted to give students more than just practice tests and answer keys. We wanted to give detailed explanations as to why the answers were correct or incorrect, similar to the experience you would receive during a tutoring session. After all, our mission was to increase accessibility to tutoring resources. Drawing from our early inspirations, we decided to utilize the widely popular Khan-Academy style of “screen-casting.” That is, we recorded ourselves working through problems on an iPad, explaining the thought processes and offering course specific tips along the way. We would ultimately make five tests filled with comprehensive practice questions- each test is accompanied by an answer key and explanation videos for each question. Below is an example of our content.